Next week, I'm interviewing Dr. Hadley Wickham — Chief Scientist at Posit PBC (formerly RStudio), bestselling author, and creator of the 'tidyverse' suite of essential R packages (incl. dplyr, ggplot2, tidyr).

Got questions for him?

In addition to the above, Hadley:
• Is

Number of states with #H5N1 in dairy cattle grows to 5 as Ohio confirms first cases.

Most interestingly, the farm in Ohio received cows from a farm in Texas on March 8th. That source farm in Texas later tested positive for H5N1.

farmanddairy.com/news/ohio-dair…

Hearing about #H5N1 #birdflu in cows? Got questions? We've got (some) answers.
I'll be updating this with the news the Idaho herd is confirmed to have H5. Also, details from a CDC analysis of the virus recovered from the infected worker. statnews.com/2024/04/03/h5n…

We are hiring a postdoctoral Research Fellow to join the fight to end TB. Please share widely!👇👇👇academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/13601

So CDC uploads infected person’s sequence.

HA clade 2.3.4.4b HPAI A(H5N1) — “closely related to viruses detected in dairy cattle in Texas”— but with PB2 E627K, a mammal adaptation.

The dairy industry may resist mass testing, but it’s clearly indicated.
cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/s…

Are poultry by-products being fed to cows? Is the feed moved with cows?

That could explain no PB2 adaptations in the genomes released AND 10% infections rates in cows in affected herds AND correlation with cow movements AND lactating cows being sick — their feed is different.

Probably time to post a review on what’s known about cows and influenza A viruses
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

I joined CBS Evening News to discuss the latest developments in H5N1.

H5N1 Update | Avian Flu Clade 2.3.4.4b

Looked at the newly uploaded Human Sequence (ID: 19027114) from Texas

- PB2 contains 👀E627K 👀

in addition to the mutations found in the dairy cattle and wild bird sequences uploaded earlier (used #Fluserver for mutational analysis)

H5N1 bird flu found at Texas poultry plant owned by Cal-Maine Foods, the largest producer of fresh eggs in the U.S.

1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets are being culled. USDA says safely handled and properly cooked eggs are safe to eat.

Tests confirm avian flu on New Mexico dairy farm, probe finds cat positives

The virus was also confirmed on five more Texas farms, as investigators find more clues from animal samples and genetic sequences.

ow.ly/vNOo50R6T75

A very good read on the current knowledge on #H5N1 in cattle in the US. It cannot be stressed enough how much we need a #OneHealth approach!

🚨Scientific Data Scientific Data welcomes submissions of Data Descriptors to the collection: Epidemiological Data. I am happy to serve as a Guest Editor for this collection. If you are interested in preparing a manuscript get in touch! ➡️ nature.com/collections/ch…

COVID generated an unprecedented volume of questions - but also new data and methodology.

To bring together these developments in inference of disease dynamics in the modern era, Anne Cori 💙 and I put together a new review (including 21 case studies): osf.io/preprints/osf/…

Although the risk to humans has not fundamentally changed at this time, we might take this opportunity to review lessons learned from the CoV-19 pandemic and improve our preparedness in public health, healthcare systems and communities. statnews.com/2024/04/01/bir…

Bird flu in humans to date have been in those w close contact w/ infected birds (or in this case, infected cow).

Given multistate nature of current outbreak in dairy cows, increasing availability of testing among dairy farm workers & others w/ direct contact, seems prudent.

What do we know and don't we know about this avian flu outbreak? Concise, clear, and educational summary from Caitlin Rivers and Katelyn Jetelina.
yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/avian-flu-bi…

Big picture take-aways at this time:
1. These ruminant infections are very unusual because influenza A has never been reported in a ruminant before. Following up on these cows, and keeping an eye on other species will be important going forward.

In response to the H5N1 infections in cows and now a human in Texas, we've just updated our North America specific H5Nx Nextstrain build with the cow and goat sequences, which are viewable under 'Species-grouped: Ruminant': nextstrain.org/groups/moncla-…. A few notes.

Please help spread the word about our #MECFS study with Putrino Lab 👇🏼 thank you 🙏🏼